EDITORIAL: A success story from this year's Minnesota Legislature

A bill that would bring more transparency to separation agreements for top local government officials is a bipartisan success story during the current legislative session.

The bill, passed unanimously by both houses of the Minnesota Legislature and awaiting the signature of Gov. Mark Dayton, is "a real breakthrough," Mark Anfinson, attorney for the Minnesota Newspaper Association, told us.

The measure was propelled by the fresh memory of community outrage this year over a quarter-million-dollar separation agreement between the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage school district and Tania Z. Chance, its former human resources director.

Under the legislation, investigations of local government leaders would be public if disciplinary action is taken, they resign or a complaint is dropped as part of another employee's separation agreement, the Pioneer Press' Christopher Magan reported. A broader initial proposal "had tried to make all investigation of top government leaders public, but advocates for school and local government officials objected when the measure reached the Senate. They feared 'unfounded allegations' or other sensitive information might be made public."

The bill broadens the scope of what falls under the rule, said Paul Hannah, an expert in media and First Amendment law who represents the Pioneer Press. "It is forward looking, irrespective of

Burnsville," he said.

And, it's a "nice fix," Hannah said. "The way the Legislature did this was nuanced, taking most of the ambiguity out" of the bill's language.

In the Burnsville dispute, district officials revealed little about the reasons for the settlement with Chance, and redacted parts of the agreement. In April, the Information Policy Analysis Division of the state Department of Administration, which advises governments about public records, issued an opinion that public information was withheld. The district then released a complete version.

Under current law, the public is entitled to information about a complaint only if discipline is imposed.

Over the years, separation and severance agreements served to short-circuit public access, in effect encouraging resignations before disciplinary action could take place, Anfinson said, explaining that the new legislation, limited to local government officials at the executive or managerial level, says that information pertaining to a separation agreement after a complaint -- even if no discipline is imposed -- will become public.

Open-government advocates have cheered the bill as an important step in a state once regarded as a leader in the open-government arena.

Will the changes make a difference? We hope so, but the pressures to keep public information private remain.

The Burnsville district's statement defending its initial decision to withhold information, issued after the April 23 opinion rebuking its actions -- is a case in point: "No school district can afford to release information that is later determined to be private data about an employee -- that can cost a school district hundreds of thousands of dollars."

It still may be cheaper to keep public information private, and that's a shame.